Friday, July 13, 2007

OK, yes, there is no "S" in action, but there's an "S" in lots of other words. But this is a family show, so I'll keep it clean.

Just wanted to share a link with you for two reasons:

1) To prove that I'm really not dead and I do still care about my blog2) Because this story is just amazing to me from a business standpoint.

Mike and Debbe Simmons own an awesome chain of bike shops here in San Diego called Bicycle Warehouse. Hands down, they are the biggest and best chain in San Diego County, not to mention just plain nice folks. Before I worked in the industry, I used to shop in their stores all the time.

Anyhow, they have been a HUGE account of Specialized's for many, many years, so it really surprised me to hear that Specialized recently dropped them recently. I didn't really know the whole story, but I got it here. Damn. What on earth are they thinking?

I'll probably rot in hell for saying this, but I'm just wondering when some of the big guys like Trek and Specialized will start to play nice in the sandbox with the rest of the kids. When will they stop telling retailers how to run their businesses? Yeah, the world of business can be an ugly place sometimes in effort to stay profitable, but I truly think stuff like this will start to backfire on them eventually.

Monday, July 2, 2007

After getting some really great news a month or so back about Sea Otter changing their dates to the first weekend in May, I just got word from a reliable source that those dates have just been moved back to April. Ugh! Looks like I threw out my rubber boots too soon.

The reasons given for the change was the media supposedly told the Sea Otter promoters that they couldn't guarantee as much coverage if the event was in May...and then supposedly Sea Otter got "outbid" by some other event who wanted the facility for the May dates.